


The Kiss At The End Of The War

by softly_speaking_valkyrie



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Comedy, Dancing, Dates, Dating, F/F, Historical Figures, Historically Accurate?, History, Humour, Jokes, Kissing, LGBTQA, Love, Romance, Thirteen x Yaz, V-J Day, World War II, celebration, ish?, light comedy, light humour, queer, thasmin, thirteen x yasmin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-20 23:40:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17032134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softly_speaking_valkyrie/pseuds/softly_speaking_valkyrie
Summary: With Ryan and Graham spending more time together away from the Tardis, The Doctor takes Yaz out alone, with the Tardis not liking the seclusion. When the time machine begrudgingly takes them to New York in 1945, it’s a celebration ready for Yaz and The Doctor to see it. V-J Day in Times Square becomes something different when the pair bumps into the very photographer, Alfred Eisenstaedt…





	The Kiss At The End Of The War

The Doctor pulled the lever that seemed to make the Tardis jut and heave like a heavy automobile. Some said the handbrake was the reason the time machine shunted and pulsed throughout the time-space continuum, but The Doctor had deduced some time ago that the control panel and the internal workings of her immense time ship were not so simple. Her past-life significant other hadn’t known at all. But The Doctor was handling it better today, or so she had thought.

As she repealed away from the control console, with Yaz right near her, hanging onto the panel too, the Tardis decided the fight back. 

“Oi!” The Doctor yelped as the craft shoved her away from the command console. 

“Doctor?” Yamin called after her, pulling her back by the arm and dragging her back to the machinery in the central collum. “What’s going on?” The woman asked, looking the Tardis’ main engine device up and down as the mysterious whirl and piping of the sounds hummed away. 

The Doctor looked at the instrumentation of the command console and scrunched her face in a perplexed grimace as she read the Gallifreyan and translated in her head. What the Tardis was telling her wasn’t polite or sensical. The Doctor wheeled one of the various nobs and flipped the suspended hourglass; she padded on the keypad and dialled in the built-in calculator. She was determined to fly the ship, even if it was giving her some grief about it. 

“I have to say, she’s not very happy it’s just the pair of us. A bit rude, have to admit,” The Doctor jabbed, looking at the crystalline spike that was the engine column of her ship. Never had it been like this. “Come on, girl. It’s just Yaz!”

“What, does it not like me?” Yaz asked, a little shocked given that they’d been travelling together for some time now, given, with Ryan and Graham. 

“She!” The Doctor correctly hastily. “And she’s fine, she just misses Ryan, I think.” She was scrunching her face again as she altered the flight data and pulled down the ignition lever across Yaz’s body. 

The Tardis shunted once again, forcing the pair of the women to collide as they fell to the side. The Doctor fell onto Yaz and they both fell onto the floor and rolled a little. By the time the Tardis levelled out throughout the time vortex, they had rolled more near the entrance hall and The Doctor was propped over Yasmin, on top of her body.

Looking up, without even noticing how she was on top of her faithful companion, The Doctor looked to the Tardis control console and the moving spire that was the engine column. She glared at her time ship and huffed with Yaz underneath her. “You did that on purpose,” The Doctor spat at the Tardis and the ship flipped the main lever in retort as if to swear at the Time Lord. 

“Um, Doctor?” The Doctor heard Yaz ask underneath her. The blond Time Lord looked down to see the tanned and beautiful skin of her fair-weathered companion, her long and plump lips curved in a childish smile and her mass of glossy black hair bedded all under her head. 

The Doctor instinctively beamed as she looked down at the smiling Yaz. 

After a second of silence and pure smiles, the blonde lurched to her feet and helped up her companion. “Sorry, Yaz. Looks like the Tardis is having one of those days. She gets like that every couple of years or so. I think it’s a side effect to be going so long without a pit stop,” The Doctor excused, dusting herself a little and walking back to the console. The Tardis seemed to spit a little hiss at her. The Doctor scrunched her nose and mouth back at her. 

“Does she often have a go at you like this depending on who you take with you?” Yasmin asked back, eying up the engine spire again. The Tardis seemed calm, but even Yaz could tell it was being silent and temperamental with the pair of them. 

The Doctor approached the panels of the command suite and observed the data along the instruments and the screens. No distress signals, nothing dangerous. It all seemed to be perfectly fine, but the Tardis had not remained still since taking off. 

“We’re still on Earth,” The Doctor reported, avoiding the question from Yaz. She didn’t want to talk ill of the Tardis or bring up old friends that were no longer around. “Looks like America, could be New York,” she continued, reading the strange symbols that, even inside the Tardis, Yaz could never begin to comprehend. The only thing they’d come across that the Tardis purposefully would not translate through its telepathic prowess was the symbols of the Doctor’s native language. “And for some reason, she’s not even wanting to tell me what year we’re in,” The Doctor huffed into a moody pout. “You’re really not playing for with me today old girl.”

“Well that’s alright, Doctor, we can just, go outside and ask, like we normally do, yeah?” Yaz suggested, already walking to the entrance hall with a skip in her step. 

“Yeah, I guess…” The Doctor bargained with herself. “I just hope it’s not nineteen twenty-nine. Been there once and I’d rather not see Black Tuesday again…” She remembered, pausing for a brisk second to relive the depression of the Depression. “Anyway, enough of that, let’s go see when we are!” She told Yaz, beckoning the woman to the entrance hall and wishing her to peek outside. 

Yasmin only looked for a second before she turned back to The Doctor looking more than a little excited. She didn’t have time to say what she’d seen before the Time Lord pushed the second door lock and fully opened both of the Tardis doors. The brightness of a peaceful Earth daybreak met them and the noise of hundreds of bursting trumpets and other brass instruments. An entire orchestra was playing swing and other big band concertos and melodies to spark a celebration dance. Times Square was a flock with thousands of civilians and servicemen and women, all dancing, hugging, kissing, or any combination of the three. Streamers and confetti of red, white and blue flooded the airways all around the procession as Yaz and The Doctor exited the Tardis and the blonde locked the door. The capsule had materialised under a closed down storefront, out of the way and behind all that was happening. No one would have seen it.

“Whatever year it is, must be a good one!” The Doctor noted, smiling as she looked around the cheering and celebrating crowd. It sounded good, it felt good to witness. 

“‘Scuse me, Sir,” Yasmin hollered to a bystander above the roar of the brass band and music.

“No can do, doll, not ‘till I see some identification here, little lady. Still can’t be too careful, even with the occasion and everything. It’ll be the Reds next and I already got my eyes open,” the gentleman called back, closing the gap between himself and the two women now. The Doctor crossed to Yaz and eyed the man. He appeared middle-aged, and suavely dressed in a slick suit with a camera laced around his neck.

The Doctor took a keen glance to the camera, noting it as a thirty-five millimetre Lecia model. 

She flashed him the Psychic Paper. “I’m The Doctor and this is my assistant, Yasmin Kahn. We’re on reserve from the Home Secretary back in Britain so there’s no need to worry. I take it that all the celebrations have something to do with the date and not something random, eh?” The Doctor lied, persuading the man as he eyed her blank paper. Yasmin pulled a face at the mention of her being the Time Lord’s ‘assistant’. 

The man took the writing on the blank paper as enough and smiled at the pair of them. “Man, you English certainly are doing something different to have women, and coloured women, as attaches to the State Department. But, who am I to judge. And as an answer to your question, yes ma’am, there’d be no other reason for dancing in the streets - they’re calling it V-J Day already. Damn Tojo couldn’t bring themselves to drag it out any longer.”

“Tojo?” Yaz asked instinctively from next to The Doctor. 

“Japs, ma’am. The Japanese. Your war’s over, and now so is ours.”

The penny dropped in The Doctor’s mind and she connected all the terminology the man was riddling off. “V-J Day! It’s the 14th of August, 1945 isn’t it?!” She gasped, smiling a treat and feeling full of herself. At her side, from a mass of excitement, she gripped and held Yasmin’s hand tightly. Yaz smiled too. 

The man smiled at both of them, holding his camera proudly. “It definitely is. Another one for the history books. The war is finally over,” he told them again, even more proudly.

“Are you here to take pictures of the parade? For a newspaper?” Yasmin asked him, now fully engrossed in where and when they were. They’d not even touched World War II era history yet, and seeing V-J Day with just The Doctor instantly struck her as romantic. She wanted to experience it all. 

“Firstly,” the man said, outreaching with his hand. “Introductions, the name’s Alfred, nice to meet ya,” he greeted them, and the pair shook his hand in turn. “And while I am here to document the procession, I ain’t working for any newspapers at the current time. However if y’all know of any hiring for quality pictures…”

“Alfred, you say?” The Doctor checked, her mind already trying to make connections. Alfred nodded. “I swear I knew an Alfred some years ago. A dear friend, but it’s lost to me now,” she spoke more to herself. Alfred seemed to take no notice and smiled on. 

“Well, if y’all want, the parade is open, and to everyone, I’m not an authority, but our great countries just fought in the same war in Europe, I say we’ve earned some joint celebrations, ladies. Enjoy Times Square like this while you can,” he told them, turning around abruptly and lowering his voice. “Dunno if we’ll see it like it again,” he murmured, snapping some pictures of the crowd. 

Yaz practically dragged The Doctor out into the roads, spinning her around and taking her by both hands. There were so many couples in the middle of where hundreds of cars would be in sixty years. The streets were completely closed and the New York sky looked pretty clear with the automobiles off the roads. The Doctor smiled as Yaz spun her and caught her hands, and without talking them began to swing and jive. The Band was ferocious and so much fun, Yaz laughed as The Doctor twirled with her. 

“Got to be honest, I didn’t think I’d ever see you dance, Doctor.”

“Are you kidding? Teddy Roosevelt saves America with the New Deal less than a decade ago, Churchill saves the world from the Axis, Stalin becomes public enemy number one, and you don’t think I can dance?” The Doctor joked, swinging her hips and shaking her legs, box-stepping and trotting in place as she clapped with Yaz’s hands, meeting her and spinning with her. Her dance was very twenties inspired, but Yasmin was loving just to see the woman move in her femme and gorgeous long coat. 

Yaz laughed again as they whirled down the street. “Do you reckon he’ll be alright, Churchill? I thought he loses an election after the war,” she asked.

“Do I reckon? I’ve known Churchill for a long time now. He wouldn’t recognise me with this face, or with these…” The Doctor looked down at her chest. “But he’ll be fine, and he’ll always be regarded as a war hero. The man who broke the Axis and saved Britain.”

The spoke for a little while longer about wartime themes topic, moving from foxtrot to slow dance and back as the band played without end. 

“I swear I knew an Alfred from New York. And I know I remember an Alfred from New York who was a photographer, but he had stuff published in Life magazine. And speaking of Life, I knew the editor and his wife and even ended up kissing them both at their nineteen fifty-six New Year’s Eve party, while at the same time, spending it with Prince Philip after Elizabeth’s bash.”

Yasmin was blown away by the tangent, realising that this version of The Doctor, the one she’d met on her first night as the incarnation, was one of a long legacy of the Time Lord and her adventures. Things slowed down as the band brought the tempo to a lull and romantic progression. Couples were hugging and slow dancing, Yaz brought The Doctor a little closer and gave her the lead, but the Time Lord continued with their dancing, holding Yasmin a little closer than before. 

“You’ve been around for a long time, even before you met me, Ryan and Graham, yeah?” Yasmin found herself asking. 

“Does that bother you? The Doctor asked, her eyes a little wide and her words a little conscious just by the sound. “That I’ve been travelling for so long, that Time Lords live so long?”

There was a pause but Yaz shook her head slowly and looked into The Doctor’s eyes. How they might have gotten into this position, into this exchange was lost to her and she didn’t mind. She just wanted to hold and be held by the Time Lord now and talk to her around the joyous celebrations of peacetime. 

“I guess I just forget sometimes that there’s so much history to see and that you’ve been around for so much of it. But there’s still so much we can see together isn’t there?” She asked The Doctor. 

“All these people right now, Yaz. They’ve just finished fighting one of the most resilient and different people they could ever try to fight, after such an atrocity, it’d be hard to stop and consider peace. But right now, they don’t know what’s going to happen in the world. Sure, some people can see Russia and the Cold War coming, but not all of them know where even that’s going to go. It’s the same with Time. I’ve been to so many places, with so many people, as so many people, but I have no idea what’s going to happen next, in the future. And that’s why I keep travelling. And I’m glad I’ve got you and the lads to come to see it too. Especially you…”

The Doctor looked deeply into Yasmin’s wanting and tentative eyes, and the moment took her. 

She leaned them both over, curving Yaz like an ornament, and kissed her closely, clutching her hand passionately. They maintained the kiss for a while, enjoying the aura and timing of it. People were cheering and clapping around them. Neither woman knew if it was for them - the time wasn’t perfect for a couple like them, especially in America, but to their surprise, when opening eyes and looking around, they found some were. 

The Doctor looked past the dancers and spotted a cameraman near the street. He’d taken their picture while they kissed. 

“I knew it!” The Doctor gleamed, lifting Yaz up and holding her. “I do know an Alfred in New York, who had a picture featured in Life Magazine, next week,” she smiled very widely. “Alfred Eisenstaedt, photographer of ‘V-J Day in Times Square’, the picture of the kiss at the end of World War II.”


End file.
